The Force Awakens: Starlight (V1.1 Released!) — Page 87

I’d be careful calling them rebels, it’s best to limit as many similarities to the original trilogy as possible for this film in particular.

Is there any real reason why we couldn’t just call them a militia? Given how important the people coming together is throughout this entire trilogy, it seems fitting. So it would be as follows:

Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
an underground militia has
sent daring pilots in search
of the last Jedi, sworn to
rekindle the light of hope
to the darkening stars. . . .

EDIT: It may also be lucrative to replace “fragile” with “pacifistic” when describing the New Republic. This way it’s more or a surprise when Hux says that the Republic secretly supports them.

I think it’s nearly perfect - except I’m going to continue to insist on replacing “warriors” with something else! Lol

I ran it through ChatGPT three times at this point asking for any suggestions and all three times it flagged that word as needing replacement. That could just be random chance, but who knows. And if you’re wondering, it seems to want to replace it with the word “forces”.

Now onto the nitpicking. I’d replace “restore” with “rekindle” only because it paints more vivid imagery. “Restore” probably fits better in place of “reforge” in the first paragraph.

As for saying “darkness” on the first line, I think it’s good to catch people’s attention, but I worry about its accuracy. I’d describe the state of the galaxy more like it’s at a crossroads or twilight. You even state at the bottom that it’s in the process of growing darker. This is why “despair” worked well, albeit it’s less flashy. I’ll think about this one some more to see if there is an alternative.

Try this:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

Balance has been broken.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to reforge the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, forces of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress to
conquer isolated worlds
beyond the reach of the
fledgling New Republic.

Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
a fearless militia loyal to
the New Republic has
sent its most daring pilot
to find the last Jedi and
rekindle the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

The new first line, while disconnected from the final paragraph’s poetic language, effectively establishes why this new trilogy even exists in the first place. There was balance, for a time, but it’s been broken. Thus why the Force needs to awaken itself - it was never meant to go this way. Unnatural effects of tue dark side have prolonged this fight. The word “reforge” now works much better here to describe the Jedi Order as it matches the imagery of something being broken and needing to be put back together.

I would still argue against the “risen from an imperial fortress” bit. This makes it looks like they were just hidden in a single location patiently waiting the right time to strike, and that’s… not exactly true, since it’s pretty established by now that they’ve been around for a good while. Doesn’t ep IX even states that they “took most of the kids a long time ago” in Kijimi?

Why not a simple “risen from imperial remnants”?

Or maybe “risen from their main fortress in Ilum”? This way we’d also be clarifying that the starkiller base was in fact the old Ilum planet, such an important place for star wars lore and whomever just watched the movies would never even know that.

PsyGemini said:

I would still argue against the “risen from an imperial fortress” bit. This makes it looks like they were just hidden in a single location patiently waiting the right time to strike, and that’s… not exactly true, since it’s pretty established by now that they’ve been around for a good while. Doesn’t ep IX even states that they “took most of the kids a long time ago” in Kijimi?

Hmmm, you might have a decent point here. Canon says Luke has been missing for 6 years. And in order for children snatched from worlds to be able to be the stormtroopers we see we are talking an average of 10 years.

So, basically, it’s clear that the First Order has been conquering places for about 10-15 years, long before Luke vanished. Now, perhaps most of those were in the Unknown Regions? So people weren’t aware of that going on. And what we talk about in the crawl is them entering into the known galaxy? It makes sense but requires outside context.

EDIT: Here’s how that might look. And yes, Illum is in the Unknown Regions.

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, soldiers of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the Unknown
Regions of the galaxy to
conquer isolated worlds
beyond the reach of the
New Republic Starfleet.

Random other thought: I prefer to refer to the Resistance as just being loyal to the New Republic rather than being directly aided by them. If they’re being aided by them then that means there’s no real reason for their negotiations in the Senate to be taking that long later in the film. It’s best to leave the opportunity for some Senators to be reluctant to fight. As Leia says in the deleted scene, most of them think she’s crazy.

I like that approach, but now there is a conflict between “claimed” and “soldiers”. Are you saying that soldiers have physically conquered every single world beyond the New Republic? Clearly this isn’t the case since they have no outposts on Jakku. Or do you mean that they have claimed the right to them, and not necessarily have been there? In that case, the soldiers wouldn’t have made that claim, and it would need to be replaced with “agents”.

Also, I still prefer the original final paragraph:

Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
a fearless militia loyal
to the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search of
the last Jedi, seeking to
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

Hi… I pretty much just randomly stumbled here near the end of many hours of deep diving rabbit holes while in bed sick today… But this caught my attention and I wanted to offer my thoughts if they might possibly help. Also this is my first post on a forum in years, so forgive any struggles I may have due to the relearning curve.

My suggestions or alternative edits to the basic mold are below in brackets. I’m not fond of all of them and unsure of others… But, I really think at the very least “once”; “evil forces”; something besides “fragile” or “fledgling”; and “the” and “amongst” in the ending would serve well in your aims.

If Luke has vanished, he’s obviously not still striving for that goal, so just from a syntax/grammar point of view “once” is sort of necessary, especially with differing verb tenses being mixed.

Forgive any poor formatting.

---

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

Balance has been broken
[… again].
Luke Skywalker, [once] striving

to reforge the legendary
 Jedi
Order, has vanished. [Despair and
darkness have begun to move again.]

[Emboldened/Unfettered] by [the
Last Jedi’s] absence, [evil forces]
[of the/known as the] FIRST ORDER
have [a/risen/spread/sprouted] from
the shadow of an Imperial fortress
conquering isolated worlds
beyond the reach of the
[nascent/reborn/awakening] New
Republic.

Desperate to unite these
[systems] in RESISTANCE, a
[loyal and daring militia has
sent their best pilot to find
the elusive Jedi Master], hoping to
[rekindle/respark] [the] light of
hope [amongst] the
[darkening/dimming]
[stars/galaxy]…

Hey, would it be possible to get the link for this?

Thanks!

I think we were extremely close to the right one a few days ago. The following is mostly the same as Nev’s last post just with those minor adjustments I suggested:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to reforge the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, agents of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
and claimed supremacy
over every world beyond
the fragile New Republic.

Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
a fearless militia loyal
to the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search of
the last Jedi, seeking to
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

Anthony, to your point about Luke clearly not embodying that hope anymore, that’s something you can easily say with hindsight. After seeing TFA people had a million reasons why Luke might have vanished. And besides, even if he doesn’t represent that hope at the beginning of TLJ, the whole point of that film is to see him get there. So in my opinion it’s integral to firmly set that expectation of him, have it shattered, and then restored in the conclusion of TLJ.

Oh wow, that is super clever (and yet obvious) to literally just put “to claim” instead of putting in the past tense. D’oh. I feel kinda dumb now.

I like yours the best, DZ!

Perfect! I see nothing wrong with it.